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  The Chicken War: In Cameroon, Globalization's Losers Fight Back and Win

The Chicken War In Cameroon, Globalization's Losers Fight Back and Win

By Uwe Buse

Part 3: Campaigning Against the 'Chickens of Death'

Nana is bald, corpulent and given to vague statements. He describes himself as someone involved in both the import and export businesses. It is said that he owns a café that he often frequents, owns the block where the café is and owns much of the neighborhood surrounding the block.

When asked about the poultry trade, Nana says: "A good business!" and stares dolefully into his glass of tea.

According to Nana, he imported several thousands tons of frozen chicken legs. Like many other importers, he threatened Njonga and argued with him. He says that he tried to convince Njonga to agree to a compromise, a gradual reduction of imports. "That way," says Nana, "everyone would have won." Njonga would still have been the farmers' savior, the government would have protected the people and the importers would have been able to continue doing business for a few more years.

But, says Nana, Njonga never wanted to discuss these things and was only interested in salmonella, the health of the people and chickens of death. Nana snorts contemptuously. Chickens of death, he says under his breath.

Has he ever hired thugs to beat up Njonga? "No," he responds, "I am a businessman, not a criminal."

The months of the campaign are nothing but a hazy memory for Njonga, a seemingly endless succession of short nights, villages, presentations, questions and answers. But his efforts paid off. Hundreds attended his meetings, even in remote locations, and they would often last until deep into the night. Everyone had something to say.

The debates were heated, because these evenings were not just about chickens, but about the ability to be heard -- by the government, the importers, the exporters and Europe. They were about the opportunity to change society, at least when it came to one issue. They were about democracy.

Njonga organized demonstrations and protest marches. The media took up the story, and even the government-owned press was unable to ignore the campaign. In interviews, Njonga denounced the machinations of the importers and corruption in the Ministry of Animal Husbandry, but he never criticized the president. It was a smart move.

There were men and women who wanted Njonga to censure the government. They wanted more than a Cameroon free of European chicken legs. Instead, they wanted a new Cameroon and they sought to use ACDIC as their tool. But Njonga, careful not to incite a rebellion, refused to comply. He had other goals. He wanted his campaign to be a general course in democracy for Cameroonian society, one that would transform the country into a debating club.

And that was exactly what happened. The president left him alone, because he too stood to benefit from Njonga's campaign by portraying himself as a liberal and a true democrat.

The debate over the pros and cons of imported chicken legs soon spread throughout the country, to the parliament, the streets, the markets, even to weddings and funerals. No one could avoid the issue. Everyone had an opinion, and the majority made it clear that it no longer wanted foreign chicken legs in Cameroon.

In the end the president added his opinion to the mix. Biya condemned the machinations of the importers, doubled the duties on imported poultry, waived the sales tax local farmers had paid on their chickens and added it to the new import duties. As a result, the imported meat became as expensive as the local meat. The president also fired the Minister of Animal Husbandry.

These steps were enough to turn the tide, with the market economy taking care of the rest. The dealers were left with their inventories of chickens, the importers gave up and the import business collapsed. Today Cameroon is virtually free of chicken legs, and whole, live chickens -- the ones that do not require a cold chain -- are being sold in the markets once again.

Njonga has won his fight. With only a handful of helpers, he achieved something that is normally reserved for nations: to shut down a national market and immunize it against globalization. ACDIC has also won. It now has new members and new targets -- tomatoes, onions and rice, imported and unnecessary, as Njonga believes. The tenor of the new campaign is that Cameroon can take care of itself. Not it's time for another success story -- for Njonga, for Cameroon and for Africa. Whether it will happen remains uncertain, because the market operates under its own laws, an experience Njonga has also made.

Kühne & Heitz, the former main importer of poultry into Cameroon, now ships fish to the country. The chicken legs have ended up in Ghana, where the flood of imported legs threatens the livelihood of both domestic chicken farmers and beef farmers, whose customers are choosing cheap, imported chicken over more expensive, local beef. Njonga has already visited the cattle farmers to help them organize their resistance movement, and farmers in nearby Congo are also interested in his expertise.

Chickens are a luxury item in Cameroon once again, as costly as they were before the crisis. Consumers are irate. The chicken farmers are complaining that, like Fridolin Mvogo, they are now dependent on brand-name chickens.

Mvogo is having trouble jumpstarting his production once again, because these chickens are now a scarce and expensive commodity. Demand for the chickens far outpaces supply at the country's hatcheries. Mvogo must be patient. He has no alternative, because he wants what everyone else wants: to be one of globalization's winners one day.

Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan

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